1478 2729 1 pb

Page 1

TOWARDS A THEORY OF FEMINIST BIOGRAPHY NANCY S. NIES

\j \j hat exactly is a feminist biogra­ phy, and what Is Its project? Since roughly 1970, with the publication of Nancy Mllford's Zelda (Epstein 336, Heilbrun 12), women have begun telling the stories of each other's lives In biogra­ phies In Increasing numbers, reclaiming lost pasts, recreating their foremothers, and revis­ ing traditional stories of women as seen through the lens of a feminist consciousness. One critic announced this increased Interest In women's Individual histories as "the emergence of a motivated subgenre powerful enough to have an Impact in literary history" (Epstein 336). This paper attempts tg define, in some measure, the project of feminist biography as it differs from more traditional forms of biography and to in­ vestigate the problems of its practice. What new models do feminist biographers offer, and what pitfalls do they encounter? Does the genre become further complicated or clarified by the addition of a feminist perspective? Does the new lens suddenly focus the field of vision so as Volume 1, Number 2

OCTOBER/1989

to restore and reflect women's (or men's) lives, or does this new angle distort and obscure them once again? When focused upon women, is feminist biography an act of rescue or yet an­ other appropriation of their lives? For the purposes of this article, "feminist" will be defined in Nancy f^iiler's words as ''a selfconsciousness about women's identity both as inherited cultural fact and as process of social construction" and as a "protest against the available fiction of female beconting" (Heilbrun 18). Biography will be defined as both the com­ plicated record and constniction of one person's life by another, and here will focus on fenrtinlst biographers writing about women. First, this paper considers feminist models of biographical representation which privilege subjectivity over objectivity and value "women's culture," or private culture, alongside public or "male" culture and the conflicts these models produce, and second, it considers how feminist biography recovers a female history of contra­ diction, embodying as it does "exceptional" lives. As a genre poised between fiction and fact, biography has long provento be a problem­ atic form of representation. Whose story gets told~the author's or the subject's? All biogra­ phers, feminist or not. must seek a critical bal­ ance between the evidence a life offers and the assumptions she or he makes about that life. This "critical balance"is no easy target, for what determines the "proper distance" from one's subject? William Zinssercomments in his Intro­ duction to Extraordinary Lives, a collection of six biographers' essays on biography:

...can the biographer trust his objectivity after years of round-the-ciock living with a saint who turns out to be only human? ...The relationship between the biogra­ phers and his subject is the most intimate one in the world of letters, both affection­ ate and adversarial, as delicately strung with tensions as a long marriage' (18) Both the essays within this book and those by feminist biographers in Ascher, DeSalvo, and Ruddick's Between Women speak of the troub­ lesome love-hate relationship between writer and subject and the difficult tension between in­ timacy and objectivity. With too much close­ ness, the biographer risks adulation or narcis-

pOo©©[b®

76


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.